These are closely related to archaeology. They, too, are things we can look at and touch after all. The difference is very much one of interpretation. Are the Parthenon statues art or archaeology; is an ancient painted pot art or archaeology? In order to avoid such questions, many people use the term ‘material culture’ to cover both. For many purposes, the difference doesn't matter. In fact, it is a good illustration of the advantages of interdisciplinary work, with different kinds of app

As you have seen, exploring the Classical world is an interdisciplinary pursuit. Perhaps the most immediately obvious aspect of this interdisciplinary approach is that you will confront different kinds of ancient sources, often simultaneously, since one of them by itself may not be sufficient for answering a particular question you may have. Quite apart from whether a source is ancient or modern, the different disciplines that make up Classical Studies use different kinds of source material.

The more you write, the more you will raid your own past. These incursions won't diminish or reduce your memories – rather those recollections can be enriched and become more fully realised. As Jamaica Kincaid says of her writing:

One of the things I found when I began to write was that writing exactly what happened had a limited amount of power for me. To say exactly what happened was less than what I knew happeAuthor(s): The Open University

The observations you make in your notebook might not always appear imaginative or pertinent to anything, but the mundane recording of events may have unlikely uses. Writing in my notebook on 15 December 1998, I observed the sky – at the coast on a murky winter's day, when the low cloud seemed to be lit by a churning, subterranean force:

the earth comes to the surface, the soil muddies the sky, clouds the air – Author(s): The Open University

The word ‘freedom’ can have powerful emotive force, that is, the power to arouse strong emotions. Its connotations are almost exclusively positive. If you describe a group as ‘freedom fighters’ this suggests that you approve of the cause for which they are fighting; call them ‘terrorists’ and you make clear your disapproval.

In many ways the emperor became a figurehead who helped to bind the empire together. The emperor was promoted as larger than life, a man who bordered on the divine. It is worth noting that the text of the Res Gestae from Ankara was found attached to the walls of the temple of Rome and Augustus; it was placed in a religious centre where the emperor was worshipped. The video section on ‘The emperor in the provinces’ also examined several cult buildings which promoted the emperor's na

In the city of Rome the emperor glorified his relationship with the provinces. Here you will consider how the emperor was exalted in the provinces. It was impossible for the emperor to be seen personally by all his subjects and so methods were employed to publicise his face and name – to overcome geographic distance by making the emperor familiar to his people. Standardised images of the emperor – on statues, busts and coins – were widely copied and placed in prominent public locations.

The image of Augustus as a good emperor persisted after his death. This was due at least in part to the success and thoroughness of his own image creation. But it also reflected the interests of his immediate successors. The Julio-Claudian emperors (so named because they were connected by blood with Julius Caesar or the Claudian family of Tiberius – see the family tree in Wells, pp. 64–5) claimed power by descent and thus it generally assisted and justified their own position to celebrate

This free course provided an introduction to studying the arts and humanities. It took you through a series of exercises designed to develop your approach to study and learning at a distance and helped to improve your confidence as an independent learner.

Understanding and managing risk This free course, Understanding and managing risk, provides an introduction to financial risk management. The processes of risk identification, risk measurement and risk management are explored. The course then goes on to examine reputational risk and operational risk. It concludes with an examination of the subject of behavioural finance and what this can contribute to our understanding of risk taking and risk management.Author(s): Creator not set

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Employee engagement Engagement is a key buzzword in 21st century management. Strategic human resource management rests on the belief that people are the key to achieving competitive advantage. Employees need to be seen as assets to be developed, not costs to be controlled. This free course explores three key themes: employee engagement, employee involvement and collective aspects of employee relations.Author(s): Creator not set

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Let us work through an email example of making a system ‘smarter’. We are all familiar with the standardised fields in an email system: From, To, Subject. The computer needs the To/From information, expressed in a standard format, to direct the message to its addressees and allow them to reply. It has no concept of who the sender and recipient are, or what the Subject field means. We can imagine simple knowledge-level email categories which add status information to t

Knowledge-based systems have the ability to analyse specific kinds of information in order to take action. Since we have earlier defined knowledge as arising out of the interpretation of information as mediated by representations, we can claim that in a limited sense such systems can ‘know’ things: they have a representation of part of the world, and they have some rules that allow them to analyse that representation, from which they can decide on a course of action. In that sense, they h